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E.M. Tippetts

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Someone Else's Fairytale

This newest book, Someone Else's Fairytale, is about a college student who catches the eye of the hottest actor in Hollywood, and she hasn't even bothered to see most of his movies. The idea occurred to me when I was thinking about various random good things that have happened to me that I hadn't ever wished for. Then I decided to take that idea to an extreme and came up with this very funny premise. Can you imagine having, say, Robert Pattinson show up on your doorstep to feed you ice cream when you haven't bothered to watch Twilight?

For the setting, well that was obvious. It had to be Albuquerque, the city that is basically a small town. Many actors have grown up there, from big names like Neil Patrick Harris to small bit parts like the kid crying in the hallway of Titanic. Even though the number of Hollywood success stories is probably typical of that size population, the fact that it is so close knit means that people know who in Hollywood is from Albuquerque. Their former classmates are still around with their amusing stories of how said famous people were in grade school.

My next thought, once I had the premise and setting, was: What if you're someone who has a reason to avoid media exposure? With this thought, I came up with my protagonist, Chloe Winters. She's got the same last name as a prominent Albuquerque dentist, because she is his daughter, just not by his wife. Hence the Winters family aren't thrilled that she exists. Besides that, the police recognize her name and she's got some unusual scars that she never talks about. When she gets her picture in the paper for talking to Mr. Hollywood, her property gets hit with vandalism.

And that's the set up for Someone Else's Fairytale. I had way too much fun writing this one, because even though a lot of fairytale conventions are out of date, they still captivate us. My contention, there's no reason to give up on fairytales. We just need to be honest about what makes a true Happily Ever After.

My replies are showing up all screwy here. Drop me an email if you want a review copy of my next book. It's release date is August 20, and I'm aiming to get the review copies out August 13, Kirkus willing! My email's in the righthand sidebar.